This is true, and the whole iOS/iPadOS/tvOS ecosystem supports HLS natively making it much easier to work with on that platform. In addition, Chrome recently added support for HLS[1] (and not DASH), so the native browser support for HLS is getting pretty wide.

HLS also has newer features that address the growing manifest issues you were seeing. [2]

All that said, I think a lot of people would feel more comfortable if the industry's adaptive streaming standard wasn't completely controlled by Apple.

[1] https://caniuse.com/http-live-streaming

[2] https://www.mux.com/blog/low-latency-hls-part-2